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#Just143
Whilst I was laid up with COVID* I got to wondering about the number of folk the virus passed through during its journey from a bat in Wuhan to me in Yorkshire.
A quick Fermi estimate suggested something rather surprising: Assuming it takes 5 days, on average, from infection to transmission to the next person (which seems reasonable given viral load peaks around 5 days) and the virus crossed to humans at the beginning of November 2019. Then COVID found its way to me (on 16th October 2021) via just 143 people!
Compare that to 250 million global COVID infections (as of October 2021) and 143 seems like an extraordinarily small, almost intimate group. Together we could (almost) enjoy a tour of London on a double decker bus!
Then I got to wondering who those 143 people are, and what interactions they had to forge the chain of infections, with me at one end and a Chinese bat (probably) at the other. Of course there is no way for me to track back more than 2 or 3 links in the chain. But I could imagine the people and their interactions. Or even better, maybe I could meet 143 new and old friends, and together we could…
